Anticipation

Well Liz Truss is out as Prime Minister, but the Tories are going to try to appoint someone else. They ought to hold a general election so everyone can vote.

Meanwhile, I'm annoyed. I thought Till was coming out Oct 11, but that was the limited release on the coasts. Then I saw it was coming to DFW on Oct 20th, but it's not near me, and I don't know if it will expand any closer. I have to drive 30 miles away to see it.

Also Sheriff Metzger from Murder She Wrote has died. At least he had a nice full life too. I'm excited that Anna May Wong will appear on U.S. quarters soon. I'll have to look out for it. I've watched another recent documentary about her and can't wait for the Hollywood biopic to be released.

Elections Matter

Early voting starts next week in Texas, so I've been researching who's on my ballot. I finally found a Fort Worth paper that lists an election guide that's not paywalled so I can finally get some background on local candidates for judges and such. As we've learned in previous elections, every political office is important. We can't let wackos run our school districts or ruin our libraries with their hysteria.

The UK is still having issues with their prime minister, who recently fired her chancellor. If she doesn't back off her disastrous tax policies, then I hope the conservatives lose further power.

Meanwhile, I was saddened by Angela Lansbury passing away last week. She was born in London, but we were lucky that she moved to America as a teen, and she had a long career here. So many roles she was famous for, though I haven't seen a lot of them. I've mostly seen her mysteries rather than her musicals or dark psychological films. I did love on Murder She Wrote whenever she would play Jessica undercover or Jessica's British cousin Emma, because then we would see her play drunk or sing. She was delightful in Death on the Nile and Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris too. I'll miss her.

Turmoil

My computer updated to Windows 11, with constant updates and restarting. It kept slowing down the laptop so much that I couldn't even load my browser for days. Plus my antivirus is such a resource hog, while constantly nagging me to upgrade to something more expensive. Not if you're gonna use 100% of my memory!

Anyway, a lot of fall shows have been premiering lately. I'm watching the Quantum Leap reboot and NBC recently ordered more episodes! Deadline reports that CBS is planning a new John Watson TV show. From the description, it appears to be set in modern times and is a medical show, like House. I'd really have preferred a detective mystery. Meanwhile the greedy Conan Doyle Estate is trying to establish an ACD universe by adapting a book series called Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall. In the kids show, young Conan Doyle attends school and meets people to inspire all his future book characters, not just Sherlock Holmes.

PBS has some new documentaries like Making Black America and Harriet Tubman. I also watched the special on the U.S. and the Holocaust recently, and it seems all the racism mixed with paranoia that refugees would be "5th column" spies; Americans kept wanting more restrictions on refugees, not less, when they heard rumors about Nazis killing Jews. Of course the paranoia about spies also led to the internment of Japanese families, and would later lead to McCarthy's postwar Communist hunts. So horrible. The antisemitism is still here, as shown by Kanye West, who's been suspended. Unfortunately, Elon Musk is going through with buying Twitter now, so who knows what a cesspool that will become. I've never joined that or Facebook, but I know that social media was important in organizing major protests in America and abroad. If it becomes a tool for more misinformation and fascism, that will be dangerous. Good luck to the protestors in Iran and to the Jewish allies suing to end various abortion bans in the US.

Already October

Well I think cooler fall temperatures have finally arrived, at least for this week. We're still in the 80s though. I tried to make a pumpkin pie but I was missing condensed milk, and the pie didn't bake right. I thought I only needed the pumpkin filling.

Apparently Beto debated Greg Abbott on Friday night. I didn't know about it, and I wasn't home anyway. I went to see the new Bros movie. I have seen numerous political ads on TV though, where they claim that the border is a lawless, dangerous hellhole, and how Beto is supposedly a radical who shouldn't be governor. It's so sickening, and they gin up right-wing panic about Black Lives Matter and the police. As if the police didn't fail spectacularly in Uvalde.

Beto's TV ads so far focus on Uvalde and also abortion. I hope the pink wave of women voters will help, but I don't know why so many white women voted for Trump in his elections. I'm concerned about stupid Ken Paxton too, since he continues to evade any prosecution after being indicted for years.

Oh, and apparently rightwingers had a freakout over Lizzo playing James Madison's crystal flute, even though nobody ever heard of the flute before. I liked seeing her joyfulness in the videos online. Good for her. I hope she's having a good year, what with winning that Emmy for her TV show.